


By the numbers II

by i_gaze_at_scully



Series: Movie night [12]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-09-06 21:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16840444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_gaze_at_scully/pseuds/i_gaze_at_scully
Summary: Can’t thank @how-i-met-your-mulder and @peacenik0 on tumblr enough. Writing is… hard. I’m lucky and thankful to have such amazing support. This chapter has been a labor of love for sure lol. And @arquivo-xis (tumblr), with an hour and 10 minutes left in the day, I technically kept my promise! (;





	By the numbers II

Sister Mary Clara was a ruler tapper. The chalk would scream like the damned themselves as she etched the seven deadly sins on the board. She’d tap her ruler against each one, demand repetition in perfect unison. Some Sisters used pointers, others just pointed, but Scully will never forget the rhythmic drumming of ruler on chalkboard. Sister Mary Clara drilled those sins and she drilled them well.

 _It didn’t do a goddamn thing though,_ Scully reflects, _because I’ve committed every single one._

 _Lust._ Rampant, irrepressible desire. Her body moves in sync with his as though to beg the question, _why are we still moving separately at all?_ His scent lingers on her long after he’s gone, clings like a lost dog, nips at her fingers till they wander down, down. Night after night in another nameless sticky motel room with nothing but stars behind her eyes in the shape of his profile. And then - oh god, and then - the night they never talk about. A static heat so intense they could’ve burnt the room to a crisp, they could’ve lit it up and let the flames lick their feet as they finally, _finally_ melted into one another. She dripped and oozed away, anything human and cognizant slipping away into raw, unkempt _need_.

 _Gluttony._ She tries to maintain some semblance of control, find some small kernel of strength to draw on to keep herself from stumbling over the edge of a cliff too steep to face. But she drinks him in, ambrosia on a dove’s wing, never enough.

 _Greed._ More. _More_ , she needs more. The flick of his tongue around a shell in the driver’s seat beside her. Her name on his fever dream lips. She needs his breath on the bridge of her nose as he huffs out his conspiracies and she needs him to stand closer, come closer, be closer as he does it. _Scully, it’s me._ When he’s out of her orbit for too long she fears collapsing in on herself without his steadying pull. And god forbid he’s pulled out into anyone else’s orbit.

 _Envy._ It’s hunter green vines cascading her body, constricting her airways when someone so much as breathes the name Diana Fowley. It’s the pin prick pain of a limb falling asleep, the disconcerting gnaw when a child is suddenly alone in an amusement park. Her envy ravages her quietly in ragged bathtub breaths, teardrop stained pillows, a warm flush in the parking garage. It overcomes her in flashes of anguish and incredulity in his sight, in _her_ sight. It is the constant thrum of the earthquake before the split.

Her baser self transgresses, stands defiantly in stark contrast to her rational nature, her default state of being. But on one Monday night in the dead of spring, Scully is forced to reconcile the duality of her sins, the perversions of love their stunted expressions represent.

It’s love. Of course it’s love.

The realization washes over her in a rush. Emotions flood in as the dams break, a passion so buoying she’s halfway out the door before she can reason her way out of it.

She’s in love with Mulder. _She’s in love with Mulder._

She stops at Blockbuster on the way to his place, tucks the first movie under her arm she can find.

 _Sloth._ Slowly. Painfully slowly they’ve built and torn, pushed and pulled, clawed their way inch by inch towards the inevitable. So much time wasted. She’s not wasting any more time.

The liquor store is empty on a Monday and she picks up a bottle - two bottles - of red.

 _Pride._ Too proud to crack, too enlightened to stoop so low. So low! to give herself to someone, to look in the mirror of his eyes and ignore the truth she sees. God how could she be so stupid? She’d let her pride stand in the way too long, far too long.

She’s jittery when she pulls up to his apartment. She forces herself to close her eyes for a minute, take a deep breath. A knowing smile spreads across her face in anticipation. She has no plan, no forethought. There was no rational choice made. Because this is no longer a choice; it’s an imperative.

She looks down at the movie in her hand on the elevator ride up and chuckles to herself. _Hercules._ Came out recently, her nephew adored it. She’s humming “I won’t say I’m in love” like a fool when she knocks. She doesn’t hear. She doesn’t stop to listen.

The light from the hallway illuminates the sliver of him that peeks behind the cracked door. His voice catches in his throat.

“Scully.” The blood drains from his face and he tries, tries to step out subtly but her Mulder is anything but subtle.

The tune fades out in slow motion, the last notes dilapidating.

“Fox? Is everything alright?” The voice that comes from Mulder’s living room drops the match and suddenly the world is up in flames.

_Wrath._

She shoves the brown paper bag into his chest with a satisfying _oomf_ and drops the movie right to the damn floor. He scrambles to put the bottles down in time to catch her arm as she turns to leave.

“Scully, wait.”

His voice explodes bombs behind her eyes and she lifts her hands to cup the invisible vice on her head.

“Scully, it’s not–”

“Not what, Mulder?” She’s making a scene, she’s shouting in his hallway with that _bitch_ standing with her ear pressed to the door no doubt. But her hindbrain takes over, the pendulum of perversion swinging wildly back into sin.

“She just–”

“Just _what_? Seemed awful dark in there, Mulder.” She gets up in his face, her hands flying above her head, out at her sides, into his chest. “Fuck you,” she spits. “I should’ve known, I should’ve–”

“Dammit, would you let me finish?” He whispers fiercely, desperately trying to exhibit the control she’s so clearly released. “Just hear me out, please.”

His body is hunched over hers, his shoulders high and tight, his chest curled inward like he’s too big for the space he means to occupy. Scully squares her shoulders, her jaw. She anchors her hands to her hips and dares him with her stare to go on. He takes a deep breath.

“There was a me before you.” He shakes his head at the implied implausibility. “There was a version of me that’s been dead so long I didn’t recognize it when Diana came back and dredged it up.” He shifts on his feet, clearly flustered. “Scully I don’t… I don’t have the right words for this.” She unwittingly softens.

“All I know is that I didn’t recognize that version of me, and I didn’t realize how much of that version I hated. It was so easy to slip back into it, so comfortable. But I don’t want comfortable, I don’t want easy. I want you.” He takes a step closer and she’s immersed in déjà vu. She flashes back to their conversation in this very hallway last summer, how ardently he argued for her to stay despite - rather, because - of how goddamn frustrating she was.

“I needed to put the part of me that would give up on my quest, give up on _you_ , to rest. I needed the closure I never got when Diana left, and I realized that after all this time, I needed to bring it on myself. I asked her over because I needed to say goodbye. To her, to us, to the part of me that should have stayed dead.”

Her mind whirls as she tries to reconcile his words with his actions, the joy she wants to feel with the hurt he’s caused. 

“Just a few months ago you were telling me not to make this personal, Mulder.” Her voice is low and steady, the rumble of thunder before the rain.

“I fucked up,” he admits, running a worried hand through his hair. “I dismissed your feelings because I couldn’t handle the paradox, the existence of two mutually exclusive me’s. It’s not an excuse, I just…” He reaches gently to touch the cross on her neck, trace the line of her collar bone. He trails off, leaves space for her to take if she wants it.

 _Swallow your pride_ , Scully reminds herself.

“I have grappled with my feelings since the night we made love.” Saying the words aloud leave a strange taste in her mouth and she watches his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows her words. “It was so soon afterwards that we lost the X Files, became so destabilized. What you’re saying aligns with the way you’ve treated me since…” Scully glances at the door briefly. “…since then.”

“You’re right, I’m… I’m sorry, Scully.” He trails his hand down her arm and loosely laces his fingers through hers. None of this is easy for him to say, she knows. She knows that they communicate more in the way they pass each other a cup of coffee than most people do in paragraphs, that they prefer the wordless sort of words that ride on brainwaves not airwaves. She came here for a reason, and as she lets the truth of his soliloquy seep in through the grooves of her fingertips, she remembers it.

“I was afraid when I left that morning. I’m still so afraid. I recognized that rationally, we’d made a huge mistake.” His face falls and she squeezes his fingers. “But there is no rational way to go about this, Mulder. What I’ve been feeling, what brought me here tonight was entirely irrational. Something I can’t explain or define, something contradictory to my nature.”

“A brilliant woman once told me that nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only what we know of it.” She smiles at her feet and laughs through her nose. He lifts her chin back up to meet his eyes.

“I’m scared too. It’d be crazy not to be scared. But I’m tired of letting fear hold me back. I can’t change what I’ve done, but I’m choosing a different path. I choose this,” he says, cupping her face. “I choose you.” He runs his thumbs across her cheekbones. She can feel his heartbeat as though it were her own; it may as well be. The red fades from her vision, the green drains from her skin, and the pendulum slows back to stasis.

There is a small click as Mulder’s door shuts. Diana clutches her purse tight to her side and calls attention to herself with a muted cough. Her eyes flit briefly to Scully, then focus on Mulder. He removes his hands but stays firm by Scully’s side.

“I think I should go,” Diana says softly. Scully recognizes the quiet defeat rooted in understanding. She doesn’t say a word, visions of vengeance having lost their foothold. Diana slips languidly around them, takes the stairs down.

“I meant what I said after the Queen Anne, Scully,” Mulder continues without preamble, hardly waiting for the echo of footsteps to fade. “I know you think I was high, but–”

“Mulder,” she cuts him off. Her whiplash headache grows too strong. “I think… I think I need some time. To process.”

She watches every micro muscle on his face to make sure he doesn’t misconstrue her meaning, think she’s rejecting him. He nods his head, acquiescing to her terms. She closes the gap between them and wraps her arms around his waist. Palms splayed on his back, ear to his chest, she lets his heartbeat pulse through her whole body. He smooths her hair down, kisses her forehead when she pulls away.

“Hey,” he calls gently from his door while she waits for the elevator. He bends down to retrieve _Hercules_ and the wine. “What about your movie?”

“Hang on to it,” she says as the doors open. “I owe you a movie night.”

**Author's Note:**

> Can’t thank @how-i-met-your-mulder and @peacenik0 on tumblr enough. Writing is… hard. I’m lucky and thankful to have such amazing support. This chapter has been a labor of love for sure lol. And @arquivo-xis (tumblr), with an hour and 10 minutes left in the day, I technically kept my promise! (;


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